BOOK XI

_War_

Pictures of a terrible evil, and denunciations of it, which will be found especially timely at the present hour.

I Sing the Battle

(_From "The Cry of Youth"_)

BY HARRY KEMP

(See pages 37, 351)

I sing the song of the great clean guns that belch forth death at will. Ah, but the wailing mothers, the lifeless forms and still!

I sing the songs of the billowing flags, the bugles that cry before. Ah, but the skeletons flapping rags, the lips that speak no more!

I sing the clash of bayonets and sabres that flash and cleave. And wilt thou sing the maimed ones, too, that go with pinned-up sleeve?

I sing acclaimèd generals that bring the victory home. Ah, but the broken bodies that drip like honey-comb!

I sing of hearts triumphant, long ranks of marching men. And wilt thou sing the shadowy hosts that never march again?

War

(_From "Beyond the Breakers"_)

BY GEORGE STERLING

(See page 504)

The night was on the world, and in my sleep I heard a voice that cried across the dark: "Give steel!" And gazing I beheld a red, Infernal stithy. There were Titans five Assembled, thewed and naked and malign Against the glare. One to the furnace throat, Whence issued screams, fed shapes of human use-- The hammer, axe and plow. Those molten soon, Another haled the dazzling ingot forth With tongs, and gave it to the anvil. Two, With massy sledges throbbing at the task, Harried the gloom with unenduring stars And poured a clangorous music on the dark, With loud, astounding shock and counter-shock Incessant. And the fifth colossus stood The captain of that labor. From his form Spread wings more black than Hell's high-altar--ribbed As are the vampire-bat's. The night grew old, And I was then aware they shaped a sword....

In that domain and interval of dream 'Twas dawn upon the headlands of the world, And I, appalled, beheld how men had reared A mountain, dark below the morning star-- A peak made up of houses and of herds, Of cradles, yokes and all the handiwork Of man. Upon its crest were gems and gold, Rare fabrics, and the woof of humble looms. Harvests and groves and battlements were made Part of its ramparts, and the whole was drenched With oil and wine and honey. Then thereon Men bound their sons, the fair, alert and strong, Sparing no household. And when all were bound, Brands were brought forth: the mount became a pyre. Black from that red immensity of flame, A tower of smoke, upcoiling to the sky, Was shapen by the winds, and took the form Of him who in the stithy gave command. A shadow between day and men he stood; His eyes looked forth on nothingness; his wings Domed desolations, and the scarlet sun Glowed through their darkness like a seal that God Might set on Hell forever. Then the pyre Shrank, and he reeled. Whereat, to save that shape Their madness had evoked in death and pain, Men rose and made a second sacrifice.

Sartor Resartus

BY THOMAS CARLYLE

(See pages 31, 74, 133, 488)

What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net-purport and upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these, by certain "Natural Enemies" of the French, there are successfully selected, during the French war, say thirty able-bodied men: Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them: she has, not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red, and shipped away, at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot, in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending; till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition, and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word "Fire!" is given and they blow the souls out of one another, and in place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest! They lived far enough apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe, there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen out; and, instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot.--Alas, so is it in Deutschland, and hitherto in all other lands; still as of old, "what devilry soever Kings do, the Greeks must pay the piper!"--In that fiction of the English Smollett, it is true, the final Cessation of War is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth; where the two Natural Enemies, in person, take each a Tobacco-pipe, filled with Brimstone; light the same, and smoke in one another's faces, till the weaker gives in: but from such predicted Peace-Era, what blood-filled trenches, and contentious centuries, may still divide us!

The Soldier's Oath

BY KAISER WILHELM OF GERMANY

(Speech delivered in 1891)

Recruits! Before the altar and the servant of God you have given me the oath of allegiance. You are too young to know the full meaning of what you have said, but your first care must be to obey implicitly all orders and directions. You have sworn fidelity to me, you are the children of my guard, you are my soldiers, you have surrendered yourselves to me, body and soul. Only one enemy can exist for you--my enemy. With the present Socialist machinations, it may happen that I shall order you to shoot your own relatives, your brothers, or even your parents--which God forbid--and then you are bound in duty implicitly to obey my orders.

The Coming of War

BY LEO TOLSTOY

(See pages 88, 110, 148, 276, 374, 416)

The bells will peal, long-haired men will dress in golden sacks to pray for successful slaughter. And the old story will begin again, the awful customary acts.

The editors of the daily Press will begin virulently to stir men up to hatred and manslaughter in the name of patriotism, happy in the receipt of an increased income. Manufacturers, merchants, contractors for military stores, will hurry joyously about their business, in the hope of double receipts.

All sorts of Government officials will buzz about, foreseeing a possibility of purloining something more than usual. The military authorities will hurry hither and thither, drawing double pay and rations, and with the expectation of receiving for the slaughter of other men various silly little ornaments which they so highly prize, as ribbons, crosses, orders, and stars. Idle ladies and gentlemen will make a great fuss, entering their names in advance for the Red Cross Society, and ready to bind up the wounds of those whom their husbands and brothers will mutilate; and they will imagine that in so doing they are performing a most Christian work.

And, smothering despair within their souls by songs, licentiousness, and wine, men will trail along, torn from peaceful labor, from their wives, mothers and children--hundreds of thousands of simple-minded, good-natured men with murderous weapons in their hands--anywhere they may be driven.

They will march, freeze, hunger, suffer sickness, and die from it, or finally come to some place where they will be slain by thousands or kill thousands themselves with no reason--men whom they have never seen before, and who neither have done nor could do them any mischief.

And when the number of sick, wounded, and killed becomes so great that there are not hands enough left to pick them up, and when the air is so infected with the putrefying scent of the "food for powder" that even the authorities find it disagreeable, a truce will be made, the wounded will be picked up anyhow, the sick will be brought in and huddled together in heaps, the killed will be covered with earth and lime, and once more all the crowd of deluded men will be led on and on till those who have devised the project, weary of it, or till those who thought to find it profitable receive their spoil.

And so once more men will be made savage, fierce, and brutal, and love will wane in the world, and the Christianizing of mankind, which has already begun, will lapse for scores and hundreds of years. And so once more the men who reaped profit from it all, will assert with assurance that since there has been a war there must needs have been one, and that other wars must follow, and they will again prepare future generations for a continuance of slaughter, depraving them from their birth.

Slavery

BY WILLIAM COWPER

(English poet, 1731-1800)

O for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumor of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more. My ear is pained, My soul is sick, with every day's report Of wrong and outrage with which earth is filled. There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart, It does not feel for man; the natural bond Of brotherhood is severed as the flax That falls asunder at the touch of fire. He finds his fellow guilty of a skin Not colored like his own; and having power To enforce the wrong, for such a worthy cause Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey. Lands intersected by a narrow frith Abhor each other. Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations, who had else Like kindred drops been mingled into one. Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys; And, worse than all, and most to be deplored, As human nature's broadest, foulest blot, Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his sweat With stripes, that Mercy, with a bleeding heart, Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast.

The Biglow Papers

BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

(These poems, first published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ in 1846, voiced the bitter opposition of New England to the Mexican war as a slave-holders' enterprise)

Thrash away, you'll _hev_ to rattle On them kittle-drums o' yourn,-- 'Tain't a knowin' kind o' cattle Thet is ketched with mouldy corn; Put in stiff, you fifer feller, Let folks see how spry you be,-- Guess you'll toot till you are yeller 'Fore you git ahold o' me!...

Ez fer war, I call it murder,-- There you hev it plain an' flat; I don't want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that; God hez sed so plump an' fairly, It's ez long ez it is broad, An' you've got to git up airly Ef you want to take in God.

'Tain't your eppyletts an' feathers Make the thing a grain more right; 'Tain't afollerin' your bell-wethers Will excuse ye in His sight; Ef you take a sword an' dror it, An' go stick a feller thru, Guv'mint ain't to answer for it, God'll send the bill to you.

Wut's the use o' meetin'-goin' Every Sabbath, wet or dry, Ef it's right to go amowin' Feller-men like oats an' rye? I dunno but wut it's pooty Trainin' round in bobtail coats,-- But it's curus Christian dooty This 'ere cuttin' folks's throats....

Tell ye jest the eend I've come to Arter cipherin' plaguey smart, An' it makes a handy sum, tu, Any gump could larn by heart; Laborin' man an' laborin' woman Hev one glory an' one shame. Ev'y thin' thet's done inhuman Injers all on 'em the same.

'Tain't by turnin' out to hack folks You're agoin' to git your right, Nor by lookin' down on black folks Coz you're put upon by white; Slavery ain't o' nary color, 'Tain't the hide thet makes it wus, All it keers fer in a feller 'S jest to make him fill its pus.

To a Nine-inch Gun

BY P. F. MCCARTHY

(This poem came to the New York _World_ office on a crumpled piece of soiled paper. The author's address was given as Fourth Bench, City Hall Park)

Whether your shell hits the target or not, Your cost is Five Hundred Dollars a Shot. You thing of noise and flame and power, We feed you a hundred barrels of flour Each time you roar. Your flame is fed With twenty thousand loaves of bread. Silence! A million hungry men Seek bread to fill their mouths again.

Kruppism

(_From "The Present Hour"_)

BY PERCY MACKAYE

(American poet and dramatist, born 1875)

Crowned on the twilight battlefield, there bends A crooked iron dwarf, and delves for gold, Chuckling: "One hundred thousand gatlings--sold!" And the moon rises, and a moaning rends The mangled living, and the dead distends, And a child cowers on the chartless wold, Where, searching in his safety vault of mold, The kobold kaiser cuts his dividends.

We, who still wage his battles, are his thralls, And dying do him homage; yea, and give Daily our living souls to be enticed Into his power. So long as on war's walls We build engines of death that he may live, So long shall we serve Krupp instead of Christ.

BY THE EMPRESS CATHERINE II OF RUSSIA

(1729-1796)

The only way to save our empires from the encroachment of the people is to engage in war, and thus substitute national passions for social aspirations.

BY FREDERICK THE GREAT OF PRUSSIA

(1712-1786)

If my soldiers were to begin to reflect, not one of them would remain in the ranks.

Our Father Which Art in Heaven

(_From "The Human Slaughter-House"_)

BY WILHELM LAMSZUS

(A novel by a Hamburg school-teacher, published in 1913. Although banned by the authorities in some places, over 100,000 copies were sold in Germany in a few weeks)

We rejoined the Colors on Friday. On Monday we are to move out. Today, being Sunday, is full-dress Church Parade.

I slept badly last night, and am feeling uneasy and limp.

And now we are sitting close-packed in church.

The organ is playing a voluntary.

I am leaning back and straining my ears for the sounds in the dim twilight of the building. Childhood's days rise before my eyes again. I am watching a little solemn-faced boy sitting crouched in a corner and listening to the divine service. The priest is standing in front of the altar, and is intoning the Exhortation devoutly. The choir in the gallery is chanting the responses. The organ thunders out and floods through the building majestically. I am rapt in an ecstasy of sweet terror, for the Lord God is coming down upon us. He is standing before me and touching my body, so that I have to close my eyes in a terror of shuddering ecstasy....

That is long, long ago, and is all past and done with, as youth itself is past and done with....

Strange! After all these years of doubt and unbelief, at this moment of lucid consciousness, the atmosphere of devoutness, long since dead, possesses me, and thrills me so passionately that I can hardly resist it. This is the same heavy twilight--these are the same yearning angel voices--the same fearful sense of rapture--

I pull myself together, and sit bolt upright on the hard wooden pew.

In the main and the side aisles below, and in the galleries above, nothing but soldiers in uniform, and all, with level faces, turned toward the altar, toward that pale man in his long dignified black gown, toward that sonorous, unctuous mouth, from whose lips flows the name of God.

Look! He is now stretching forth his hands. We incline our heads. He is pronouncing the Benediction over us in a voice that echoes from the tomb. He is blessing us in the name of God, the Merciful. He is blessing our rifles that they may not fail us; he is blessing the wire-drawn guns on their patent recoilless carriages; he is blessing every precious cartridge, lest a single bullet be wasted, lest any pass idly through the air; that each one may account for a hundred human beings, may shatter a hundred human beings simultaneously.

Father in Heaven! Thou art gazing down at us in such terrible silence. Dost Thou shudder at these sons of men? Thou poor and slight God! Thou couldst only rain Thy paltry pitch and sulphur on Sodom and Gomorrah. But we, Thy children, whom Thou hast created, we are going to exterminate them by high-pressure machinery, and butcher whole cities in factories. Here we stand, and while we stretch our hands to Thy Son in prayer, and cry Hosannah! we are hurling shells and shrapnel in the face of Thy Image, and shooting the Son of Man down from His Cross like a target at the rifle-butts.

And now the Holy Communion is being celebrated. The organ is playing mysteriously from afar off, and the flesh and blood of the Redeemer is mingling with our flesh and blood.

There He is hanging on the Cross above me, and gazing down upon me.

How pale those cheeks look! And those eyes are the eyes as of one dead! Who was this Christ Who is to aid us, and Whose blood we drink? What was it they once taught us at school? Didst Thou not love mankind? And didst Thou not die for the whole human race? Stretch out Thine arms toward me. There is something I would fain ask of Thee.... Ah! they have nailed Thy arms to the Cross, so that Thou canst not stretch out a finger toward us.

Shuddering, I fix my eyes on the corpse-like face and see that He died long ago, that He is nothing more than wood, nothing other than a puppet. Christ, it is no longer Thee to whom we pray. Look there! Look there! It is he. The new patron saint of a Christian State! Look there! It is he, the great Genghis Khan. Of him we know that he swept through the history of the world with fire and sword, and piled up pyramids of skulls. Yes, that is he. Let us heap up mountains of human heads, and pile up heaps of human entrails. Great Genghis Khan! Thou, our patron saint! Do thou bless us! Pray to thy blood-drenched father seated above the skies of Asia, that he may sweep with us through the clouds; that he may strike down that accursed nation till it writhes in its blood, till it never can rise again. A red mist swims before my eyes. Of a sudden I see nothing but blood before me. The heavens have opened, and the red flood pours in through the windows. Blood wells up on the altar. The walls run blood from the ceiling to the floor, and--God the Father steps out of the blood. Every scale of his skin stands erect, his beard and hair drip blood. A giant of blood stands before me. He seats himself backward on the altar, and is laughing from thick, coarse lips--there sits the King of Dahomey, and he butchers his slaves. The black executioner raises his sword and whirls it above my head. Another moment and my head will roll down on the floor--another moment and the red jet will spurt from my neck.... Murderers, murderers! None other than murderers! Lord God in Heaven!

Then--

The church door opens creaking--

Light, air, the blue of heaven, burst in.

I draw a breath of relief. We have risen to our feet, and at length pass out of the twilight into the open air.

My knees are still trembling under me.

We fall into line, and in our hob-nailed boots tramp in step down the street toward the barracks. When I see my mates marching beside me in their matter-of-fact and stolid way, I feel ashamed, and call myself a wretched coward. What a weak-nerved, hysterical breed, that can no longer look at blood without fainting! You neurasthenic offspring of your sturdy peasant forebears, who shouted for joy when they went out to fight!

I pull myself together and throw my head back.

I never was a coward, and eye for eye I have always looked my man in the face, and will so do this time, too, happen what may.

The War Prayer[A]

[A] (Quoted by special permission of Harper & Brothers.)

BY MARK TWAIN

(American humorist. See page 265. This "War Prayer," withheld from publication until after Mark Twain's death, pictures the assembling of soldiers in church, and the prayer of the chaplain for victory. In answer to the prayer, God sends down a white-robed messenger, who voices the unspoken meaning of the prayer.)

"O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended through wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sport of the sun-flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it--for our sakes, who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask of one who is the Spirit of love and who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset, and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Grant our prayer, O Lord, and Thine shall be the praise and honor and glory now and ever, Amen."

(After a pause.) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak!--the messenger of the Most High waits."

The Illusion of War

BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

(American poet, born in England, 1866)

War I abhor, and yet how sweet The sound along the marching street Of drum and fife, and I forget Wet eyes of widows, and forget Broken old mothers, and the whole Dark butchery without a soul.

Without a soul, save this bright drink Of heady music, sweet as hell; And even my peace-abiding feet Go marching with the marching street-- For yonder, yonder goes the fife, And what care I for human life!

The tears fill my astonished eyes, And my full heart is like to break; And yet 'tis all embannered lies, A dream those little drummers make.

O, it is wickedness to clothe Yon hideous grinning thing that stalks, Hidden in music, like a queen, That in a garden of glory walks, Till good men love the thing they loathe.

Art, thou hast many infamies, But not an infamy like this-- Oh, snap the fife, and still the drum, And show the monster as she is!

Lay Down Your Arms

BY BARONESS BERTHA VON SUTTNER

(Austrian novelist and peace advocate, 1850-1914. Her protest against war, published in 1889, made a deep impression throughout Europe. In the following scene a woman is taken to visit a field of battle with the hospital-corps)

No more thunder of artillery, no more blare of trumpets, no more beat of drum; only the low moans of pain and the rattle of death. In the trampled ground some redly-glimmering pools, lakes of blood; all the crops destroyed, only here and there a piece of land left untouched, and still covered with stubble; the smiling villages of yesterday turned into ruins and rubbish. The trees burned and hacked in the forests, the hedges torn with grape-shot. And on this battle-ground thousands and thousands of men dead and dying--dying without aid. No blossoms of flowers are to be seen on wayside or meadow; but sabres, bayonets, knapsacks, cloaks, overturned ammunition wagons, powder wagons blown into the air, cannon with broken carriages. Near the cannon, whose muzzles are black with smoke, the ground is bloodiest. There the greatest number and the most mangled of dead and half-dead men are lying, literally torn to pieces with shot; and the dead horses, and the half-dead which raise themselves on their feet--such feet as they have left--to sink again; then raise themselves up once more and fall down again, till they only raise their head to shriek out their pain-laden death-cry. There is a hollow way quite filled with corpses trodden into the mire. The poor creatures had taken refuge there no doubt to get cover, but a battery has driven over them, and they have been crushed by the horses' hoofs and the wheels. Many of them are still alive--a pulpy, bleeding mass, but "still alive".

And yet there is still something more hellish even than all this, and that is the appearance of the most vile scum of humanity, as it shows itself in war--the appearance and activity of "the hyenas of the battlefield." "Then slink on the monsters who grope after the spoils of the dead, and bend over the corpses and over the living, mercilessly tearing off their clothes from their bodies. The boots are dragged off the bleeding limbs, the rings off the wounded hands, or to get the ring the finger is simply chopped off, and if a man tries to defend himself from such a sacrifice, he is murdered by these hyenas; or, in order to make him unrecognizable, they dig his eyes out."

I shrieked out loud at the doctor's last words. I again saw the whole scene before me, and the eyes into which the hyena was plunging his knife were Frederick's soft, blue, beloved eyes.

"Pray, forgive me, dear lady, but it was by your own wish----"

"Oh, yes; I desire to hear it all. What you are now describing was the night that follows the battle; and these scenes are enacted by the starlight?"

"And by torchlight. The patrols which the conquerors send out to survey the field of battle carry torches and lanterns, and red lanterns are hoisted on signal poles to point out the places where flying hospitals are to be established."

"And next morning, how does the field look?"

"Almost more fearful still. The contrast between the bright smiling daylight and the dreadful work of man on which it shines has a doubly-painful effect. At night the entire picture of horror is something ghostly and fantastic. By daylight it is simply hopeless. Now you see for the first time the mass of corpses lying around on the lanes, between the fields, in the ditches, behind the ruins of walls. Everywhere dead bodies--everywhere. Plundered, some of them naked; and just the same with the wounded. Those who, in spite of the nightly labor of the Sanitary Corps, are still always lying around in numbers, look pale and collapsed, green or yellow, with fixed and stupefied gaze, or writhing in agonies of pain, they beg any one who comes near to put them to death. Swarms of carrion crows settle on the tops of the trees, and with loud croaks announce the bill of fare of the tempting banquet. Hungry dogs, from the villages around, come running by and lick the blood from wounds. Further afield there are a few hyenas to be seen, who are still carrying on their work hastily. And now comes the great interment."

"Who does that--the Sanitary Corps?"

"How could they suffice for such a mass of work? They have fully enough to do with the wounded."

"Then troops are detailed for the work?"

"No. A crowd of men impressed, or even offering themselves voluntarily--loiterers, baggage people, who are supporting themselves by the market-stalls, baggage-wagons and so forth, and who now have been hunted away by the force of the military operations, together with the inhabitants of the cottages and huts--to dig trenches--good large ones, of course--wide trenches, for they are not made deep--there is no time for that. Into these the dead bodies are thrown, heads up or heads down just as they come to hand. Or it is done in this way: A heap is made of the corpses, and a foot or two of earth is heaped up over them, and then it has the appearance of a tumulus. In a few days rain comes on and washes the covering off the festering dead bodies! but what does that matter? The nimble, jolly grave-diggers do not look so far forward. For jolly, merry workmen they are, that one must allow. Songs are piped out there, and all kinds of dubious jokes made--nay, sometimes a dance of hyenas is danced round the open trench. Whether life is still stirring in several of the bodies that are shovelled into it or are covered with the earth, they give themselves no trouble to think. The thing is inevitable, for the stiff cramp often comes on after wounds. Many who have been saved by accident have told of the danger of being buried alive which they have escaped. But how many are there of those who are not able to tell anything! If a man has once got a foot or two of earth over his mouth he may well hold his tongue."

Before Sedan

BY AUSTIN DOBSON

(English poet and essayist, born 1840)

Here in this leafy place Quiet he lies, Cold, with his sightless face Turned to the skies; 'Tis but another dead; All you can say is said.

Carry his body hence,-- Kings must have slaves; Kings climb to eminence Over men's graves; So this man's eye is dim;-- Throw the earth over him.

Doubt

(_From "The Present Hour"_)

BY PERCY MACKAYE

(One of a group of six sonnets, entitled "Carnage," written in September, 1914)

So thin, so frail the opalescent ice Where yesterday, in lordly pageant, rose The monumental nations--the repose Of continents at peace! Realities Solid as earth they seemed; yet in a trice Their bastions crumbled in the surging floes Of unconceivable, inhuman woes, Gulfed in a mad, unmeaning sacrifice.

We, who survive that world-quake, cower and start, Searching our hidden souls with dark surmise: So thin, so frail--is reason? Patient art-- Is it all a mockery, and love all lies? Who sees the lurking Hun in childhood's eyes? Is hell so near to every human heart?

The Wife of Flanders

BY GILBERT K. CHESTERTON

(See page 180)

Low and brown barns, thatched and repatched and tattered, Where I had seven sons until to-day-- A little hill of hay your spur has scattered.... This is not Paris. You have lost your way.

You, staring at your sword to find it brittle, Surprised at the surprise that was your plan; Who, shaking and breaking barriers not a little, Find never more the death-door of Sedan.

Must I for more than carnage call you claimant, Pay you a penny for each son you slay? Man, the whole globe in gold were no repayment For what you have lost. And how shall I repay?

What is the price of that red spark that caught me From a kind farm that never had a name? What is the price of that dead man they brought me? For other dead men do not look the same.

How should I pay for one poor graven steeple Whereon you shattered what you shall not know? How should I pay you, miserable people? How should I pay you everything you owe?

Unhappy, can I give you back your honor? Tho' I forgave, would any man forget? While all our great green earth has, trampled on her, The treason and terror of the night we met.

Not any more in vengeance or in pardon, One old wife bargains for a bean that's hers, You have no word to break; no heart to harden. Ride on and prosper. You have lost your spurs.

Buttons

BY CARL SANDBURG

(Contemporary American poet)

I have been watching the war map slammed up for advertising in front of the newspaper office. Buttons--red and yellow buttons--blue and black buttons--are shoved back and forth across the map.

A laughing young man, sunny with freckles, Climbs a ladder, yells a joke to somebody in the crowd, And then fixes a yellow button one inch west And follows the yellow button with a black button one inch west.

(Ten thousand men and boys twist on their bodies in a red soak along a river edge, Gasping of wounds, calling for water, some rattling death in their throats.) Who by Christ would guess what it cost to move two buttons one inch on the war map here in front of the newspaper office where the freckle-faced young man is laughing to us?

The Wine Press

BY ALFRED NOYES

(English poet, born 1880)

A Murdered man, ten miles away, Will hardly shake your peace, Like one red stain upon your hand; And a tortured child in a distant land Will never check one smile to-day, Or bid one fiddle cease.

_The News_

It comes along a little wire, Sunk in a deep sea; It thins in the clubs to a little smoke Between one joke and another joke, For a city in flames is less than the fire That comforts you and me.

_The Diplomats_

Each was honest after his way, Lukewarm in faith, and old; And blood, to them, was only a word, And the point of a phrase their only sword, And the cost of war, they reckoned it In little disks of gold.

They were cleanly groomed. They were not to be bought. And their cigars were good. But they had pulled so many strings In the tinselled puppet-show of kings That, when they talked of war, they thought Of sawdust, not of blood;

Not of the crimson tempest Where the shattered city falls: They thought, behind their varnished doors, Of diplomats, ambassadors, Budgets, and loans and boundary-lines, Coercions and re-calls.

_The Charge_

_Slaughter! Slaughter! Slaughter!_ The cold machines whirred on. And strange things crawled amongst the wheat With entrails dragging round their feet, And over the foul red shambles A fearful sunlight shone....

The maxims cracked like cattle-whips Above the struggling hordes. They rolled and plunged and writhed like snakes In the trampled wheat and the blackthorn brakes, And the lightnings leapt among them Like clashing crimson swords.

The rifles flogged their wallowing herds, Flogged them down to die. Down on their slain the slayers lay, And the shrapnel thrashed them into the clay, And tossed their limbs like tattered birds Thro' a red volcanic sky.

War

(_From "Songs of Joy"_)

BY WILLIAM H. DAVIES

(An English poet whose "Autobiography of a Super-tramp" was given to the world with an introduction by Bernard Shaw)

Ye Liberals and Conservatives, Have pity on our human lives, Waste not more blood on human strife; Until we know some way to use This human blood we take or lose, 'Tis sin to sacrifice our life.

When pigs are stuck we save their blood And make puddings for our food, The sweetest and the cheapest meat; And many a woman, man and boy Have ate those puddings with great joy, And oft-times in the open street.

Let's not have war till we can make, Of this sweet life we lose or take, Some kind of pudding of man's gore; So that the clergy in each parish May save the lives of those that famish Because meat's dear and times are poor.

In Praise of the Warrior

(_From "Don Quixote"_)

BY MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

(Best known of Spanish novelists, 1547-1616; himself a soldier, captured and made a galley-slave in Algiers)

I am not a barbarian, and I love letters, but let us beware of according them pre-eminence over arms, or even an equality with arms. The man of letters, it is very true, instructs and illuminates his fellows, softens manners, elevates minds, and teaches us justice, a beautiful and sublime science. But the warrior makes us observe justice. His object is to procure us the first and sweetest of blessings, peace, gentlest peace, so necessary to human happiness. This peace, adorable blessing, gift divine, source of happiness, this peace is the object of war. The warrior labors to procure it for us, and the warrior therefore performs the most useful labor in the world.

Song of the Exposition

BY WALT WHITMAN

(See pages 184, 268)

Away with themes of war! away with War itself! Hence from my shuddering sight, to never more return, that show of blacken'd, mutilated corpses! That hell unpent, and raid of blood--fit for wild tigers, or for lop-tongued wolves--not reasoning men! And in its stead speed Industry's campaigns! With thy undaunted armies, Engineering! Thy pennants, Labor, loosen'd to the breeze! Thy bugles sounding loud and clear!

Woman and War

(_From "Woman and Labor"_)

BY OLIVE SCHREINER

(See pages 240, 246, 504)

In supplying the men for the carnage of a battlefield, women have not merely lost actually more blood, and gone through a more acute anguish and weariness, in the months of bearing and in the final agony of child-birth, than has been experienced by the men who cover it; but, in the months of rearing that follow, the women of the race go through a long, patiently endured strain which no knapsacked soldier on his longest march has ever more than equalled; while, even in the matter of death, in all civilized societies, the probability that the average woman will die in child-birth is immeasurably greater than the probability that the average male will die in battle.

There is, perhaps, no woman, whether she have borne children, or be merely potentially a child-bearer, who could look down upon a battlefield covered with slain, but the thought would rise in her, "So many mothers' sons! So many young bodies brought into the world to lie there! So many months of weariness and pain while bones and muscles were shaped within! So many hours of anguish and struggle that breath might be! So many baby mouths drawing life at women's breasts;--all this, that men might lie with glazed eyeballs, and swollen faces, and fixed, blue, unclosed mouths, and great limbs tossed--this, that an acre of ground might be manured with human flesh, that next year's grass or poppies or karoo bushes may spring up greener and redder, where they have lain, or that the sand of a plain may have the glint of white bones!" And we cry, "Without an inexorable cause, this must not be!" No woman who is a woman says of a human body, "It is nothing!"

The Arsenal at Springfield

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

(Probably the most popular of American poets, 1807-1882)

This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling, Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms; But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing Startles the villages with strange alarms.

Ah! what a sound will rise--how wild and dreary-- When the death-angel touches those swift keys! What loud lament and dismal Miserere Will mingle with their awful symphonies!

I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus-- The cries of agony, the endless groan, Which, through the ages that have gone before us, In long reverberations reach our own....

Is it, O man, with such discordant noises, With such accursed instruments as these, Thou drownest Nature's sweet and kindly voices, And; arrest the celestial harmonies?

Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts, Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts.

War and Peace

BY BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

(American statesman, 1706-1790)

I join with you most cordially in rejoicing at the return of peace. I hope it will be lasting, and that mankind will at length, as they call themselves reasonable creatures, have reason enough to settle their differences without cutting throats; for, in my opinion, there never was a good war or a bad peace. What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of life might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of utility! What an extension of agriculture, even to the tops of the mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads, and other public works, edifices and improvements, rendering England a complete paradise, might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief--in bringing misery into thousands of families, and destroying the lives of so many working people, who might have performed the useful labors.

A Prayer of the Peoples

(_From "The Present Hour"_)

BY PERCY MACKAYE

(See pages 561, 572)

God of us who kill our kind! Master of this blood-tracked Mind Which from wolf and Caliban Staggers toward the star of Man-- Now, on Thy cathedral stair, God, we cry to Thee in prayer!

Where our stifled anguish bleeds Strangling through Thine organ reeds, Where our voiceless songs suspire From the corpses in Thy choir-- Through Thy charred and shattered nave, God, we cry on Thee to save!

Save us from our tribal gods! From the racial powers, whose rods-- Wreathed with stinging serpents--stir Odin and old Jupiter From their ancient hells of hate To invade Thy dawning state....

Lord, our God! to whom, from clay, Blood and mire, Thy peoples pray-- Not from Thy cathedral's stair Thou hearest:--Thou criest _through_ our prayer For our prayer is but the gate: We, who pray, ourselves are fate.

War

BY THE GREAT INDIAN, CHIEF JOSEPH

Hear me, my warriors; my heart is sick and sad; Our chiefs are killed, The old men are all dead, It is cold and we have no blankets; The little children are freezing to death. Hear me, my warriors; my heart is sick and sad; From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever!

A Project for a Perpetual Peace

BY JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU

(A document published 1756 in which the French philosopher outlined in detail a plan for a European federation, which seems in 1915 to have become the next step in civilization)

As a more noble, useful, and delightful Project never engaged the human mind, than that of establishing a perpetual peace among the contending nations of Europe, never did a writer lay a better claim to the attention of the public than he who points out the means to carry such a design into execution. It is indeed very difficult for a man of probity and sensibility, not to be fired with a kind of enthusiasm on such a subject; nay, I am not clear that the very illusions of a heart truly humane, whose warmth makes everything easily surmountable, are not in this case more eligible than that rigid and forbidding prudence, which finds in its own indifference and want of public spirit, the chief obstacle to everything that tends to promote the public good.

I doubt not that many of my readers will be forearmed with incredulity, to withstand the pleasing temptation of being persuaded; and indeed I sincerely lament their dullness in mistaking obstinacy for wisdom. But I flatter myself, that many an honest mind will sympathize with me in that delightful emotion, with which I take up the pen to treat of a subject so greatly interesting to the world. I am going to take a view, at least in imagination, of mankind united by love and friendship: I am going to take a contemplative prospect of an agreeable and peaceful society of brethren, living in constant harmony, directed by the same maxims, and joint sharers of one common felicity; while, realizing to myself so affecting a picture, the representation of such imaginary happiness will give me the momentary enjoyment of a pleasure actually present.

Let the People Vote on War

BY ALLEN L. BENSON

(American Socialist writer, born 1871)

Each voter should sign his or her name to the ballot that is voted. In counting, the ballots for war should be kept apart from the ballots against war. In the event of more than half of the population voting for war, those who voted for war should be sent to the front in the order in which they appeared at their respective polling places. Nobody who voted against war should be called to serve until everybody who voted for war had been sent to the front.

Anti-Militarism

(_From "The Red Wave"_)

BY JOSEPH-HENRY ROSNY, THE ELDER

(French novelist, member of the Académie des Goncourts; born 1856. A novel of revolutionary Syndicalism. The present scene describes a debate organized between champions of the revolutionary and the conservative labor unions, the "Reds" and the "Yellows"; a grand Homeric combat of ideas, in which the audience is wrought to a furious pitch of excitement, and does as much talking as the orators. In the following extract, from about forty pages of mingled eloquence and humor, the champion of the "Reds" announces "the grave and dreadful problem of anti-militarism")

A long shudder agitated the hostile crowds. All the wild beasts quivered in their cages. Rougemont, immobile, scarcely raised his hand; never before had his voice sounded more grave and more pathetic.

"Ah, yes! Question profound and dreadful. No one has been troubled by it more than I, for I am not among those bold internationalists who deny their country. I love my land of France. To make our happiness perfect, we must have the land of France. But who would dare to say that we, the poor, are any other thing upon that land than food for suffering and food for barracks? The worst Prussian, provided that he owns a coin of a hundred sous--is he not superior to the unhappy wretch who rummages in empty pockets? All the pleasures, all the beauty, all the luxury, our most beautiful daughters, belong to the rich cosmopolitan: he possesses the enchanter's ring. If you have nothing, you will live more a stranger in your country than the dog of a swindling millionaire. If you have nothing, you will be insulted, scorned, hunted, locked in prison for vagabondage. _La patrie!_ _La patrie_ of the poor! It is a fable, a symbol, an inscription upon a military-list or a school-book--the most bitter derision! Your right, unhappy ones--it is to suffer and defend the soil, which belongs to your master, to him who possesses. For him, for him alone, our France devotes each year a billion francs for army and navy....

"It is necessary purely and simply to suppress the budget of the army and navy," thundered Rougemont, with such force that he broke the tumult. "France must give all at once, without hesitation, the example of disarmament. And that would be a thing so grand and so beautiful that the entire universe would applaud, that all humanity would turn toward her. From that day alone we should be at the head of the nations, and our country would become the country of free men!"

"Under the heel of Wilhelm!"

"A Poland!"

"Guts for the cats!"

"Sold! Rubbish! Meat for sheenies!"

"... living in boiling water like lobsters!"

All at once, the tumult sank. The voice of the orator forced itself upon the ear, high as a bell, precise as a clarion. "Free, superb, and triumphant! Queen of the peoples, goddess of the unfortunate! If we should disarm, before ten years, France would become a land of pilgrimage, the Mecca of men. Before twenty years, the other nations would have followed her example. As for making of us a Poland, let them try it! Have you then forgotten the teachings of history? Do you not know that our grand armies, our innumerable victories--we have won as many victories as all the rest of Europe together--have only ended in the crushing of Waterloo and the collapse of Sedan? On the contrary, Italy, dismembered for centuries, Italy, which cannot count its defeats, is become a free nation. That is because it is inhabited by a race, clean and well-defined, upon which the foreigner has been unable to impress his mark. France enslaved, she, the most intelligent of nations, she who has had the most influence upon minds and hearts! Come now, that is not possible, that will never happen! But the people who would howl indignation at the dismembering of a disarmed France, would let a war-like France go down to ruin: she would be only one country like the others. So, I repeat it without scruple: it is necessary that we should give the magnificent example of disarmament. Only then shall we be a nation loved and admired among nations. Only then will all hearts turn toward us. Only then will the idea that anyone could touch France seem a sacrilege such as no tyrant would risk!"

The Dawn

BY ÉMILE VERHAEREN

(In this play the Belgian poet has voiced his hopes for the regeneration of human society. The city of Oppidomagne is besieged by a hostile army, and the revolutionists in both armies conspire and revolt. The gates of the city are thrown open, and the end of war declared. A captain in the hostile army is speaking over the body of Hérénian, leader of the revolutionists in the city)

I was his disciple, and his unknown friend. His books were my Bible. It is men like this who give birth to men like me, faithful, long obscure, but whom fortune permits, in one overwhelming hour, to realize the supreme dream of their master. If fatherlands are fair, sweet to the heart, dear to the memory, armed nations on the frontiers are tragic and deadly; and the whole world is yet bristling with nations. It is in their teeth that we throw them this example of our concord. (Cheers.) They will understand some day the immortal thing accomplished here, in this illustrious Oppidomagne, whence the loftiest ideas of humanity have taken flight, one after another, through all the ages. For the first time since the beginning of power, since brains have reckoned time, two races, one renouncing its victory, the other its humbled pride, are made one in an embrace. The whole earth must needs have quivered, all the blood, all the sap of the earth must have flowed to the heart of things. Concord and good will have conquered hate. (Cheers.) Human strife, in its form of bloodshed, has been gainsaid. A new beacon shines on the horizon of future storms. Its steady rays shall dazzle all eyes, haunt all brains, magnetize all desires. Needs must we, after all these trials and sorrows, come at last into port, to whose entrance it points the way, and where it gilds the tranquil masts and vessels.

(Enthusiasm of all; the people shout and embrace. The former enemies rise and surround the speaker. Those of Oppidomagne stretch their arms towards him.)

The Springtime of Peace

(_From "Studies in Socialism"_)

BY JEAN LÉON JAURÉS

(Editor of _l'Humanité_, and leader of the French Socialist movement, 1859-1914; probably the most eminent of Socialist parliamentarians, assassinated by a fanatic at the outbreak of the war with Germany. The following is the peroration of a speech delivered at an Anglo-French parliamentary dinner, 1903)

The majesty of suffering labor is no longer dumb: it speaks now with a million tongues, and it asks the nations not to increase the ills which crush down the workers by an added burden of mistrust and hate, by wars and the expectation of wars.

Gentlemen, you may ask how and when and in what form this longing for international concord will express itself to some purpose.... I can only answer you by a parable which I gleaned by fragments from the legends of Merlin, the magician, from the Arabian Nights, and from a book that is still unread.

Once upon a time there was an enchanted forest. It had been stripped of all verdure, it was wild and forbidding. The trees, tossed by the bitter winter wind that never ceased, struck one another with a sound as of breaking swords. When at last, after a long series of freezing nights and sunless days that seemed like nights, all living things trembled with the first call of spring, the trees became afraid of the sap that began to move within them. And the solitary and bitter spirit that had its dwelling within the hard bark of each of them said very low, with a shudder that came up from the deepest roots: "Have a care! If thou art the first to risk yielding to the wooing of the new season, if thou art the first to turn thy lancelike buds into blossoms and leaves, their delicate raiment will be torn by the rough blows of the trees that have been slower to put forth leaves and flowers."

And the proud and melancholy spirit that was shut up within the great Druidical oak spoke to its tree with peculiar insistence: "And wilt thou, too, seek to join the universal love-feast, thou whose noble branches have been broken by the storm?"

Thus, in the enchanted forest, mutual distrust drove back the sap, and prolonged the death-like winter even after the call of spring.

What happened at last? By what mysterious influence was the grim charm broken? Did some tree find the courage to act alone, like those April poplars that break into a shower of verdure, and give from afar the signal for a renewal of all life? Or did a warmer and more life-giving beam start the sap moving in all the trees at once? For lo! in a single day the whole forest burst forth into a magnificent flowering of joy and peace.

BY MICAH

(Hebrew prophet, B. C. 700)

He shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid; for the mouth of the Lord of hosts hath spoken it.